Links
Studies of Manuscript Documents

Eurodocs This link site was once mainly confined to transcripts of various primary source documents from Europe, but now includes a number of sites showing manuscript facsimiles. A major portal for the study of medieval documentary material.

Discovery This provides online access to digitised public records, as well as other material,at the National Archives, London. Access to the index is free, but there is a fee to download a digital image of a document. Documents available include a large number of medieval wills from the Prerogative Court at Canterbury. This site also includes the new Domesday Book section, which gives access to every page of the two volumes of Domesday Book. You get a modern translation of every page downloaded. If you look up documents in the online catalogue, it is also possible to order digital downloads of selected documents for a fee.

English Medieval Legal Documents AD 600 - AD 1535: A Compilation of Published Sources This site aims to provide bibliographical material for published works, as well as links to online resources including major text and image collections, for English medieval legal documents. There is some introductory explanatory material in the various sections, and links to Wikipedia entries (which I presume they have vetted thoroughly).

Anglo-Saxon Charters and Kemble: the Anglo-Saxon Charters Website both give access to a range of material on all known Anglo-Saxon charters.

Durham Cathedral Muniments Images of a large number of medieval documents, with partial transcripts and notes for some examples. The images were originally selected for a class in palaeography and diplomatic. There is an associated online exhibition of Medieval Seals, with a large number of images and commentary, from Durham University Library.

Yorkshire Archaeological Society - Manuscripts This shows images of a selection of manuscript documents, one with a transcription, from the archives of the society.

Bibliographics This is a very strange web site which gives no indication of who it belongs to. They obviously did a weekend course on Java at some stage, but would have been well advised to complete a longer course. It has two sections which illustrate manuscripts. Four English Land Grants provides images of three documents (one was AWAL when I saw it), supposedly with a line by line transcription, but this didn't work on my browser (IE6). There is also a section on Manuscript Fragments found in bookbindings.

ARCHIM - Archives Nationales Images de Documents A French language site with database interface which shows images and gives catalogue information, including the accessibility of the original document, for manuscripts in the French National Archives.

Scriptmani Manuscrits A French language site, but with some English translations, by an enthusiastic manuscript collector who has put his treasures on the web for all to enjoy. There are also transcriptions of some documents.

Parchemins: Quercy Médiéval Photographs of documents on papyrus and parchment relating to the history of Quercy, derived from the ARCHIM database.

Comptes des Chatellenies Savoyardes This site currently shows four interactive paleography exercises from segments of 13th and 14th century accounts from Savoy. A small site, but it looks at a rather different class of document to most other sites.

Codice Diplomatico digitale della Lombardia medievale (secoli VIII - XII) From the University of Pavia, this Italian language site is a work in progress, aiming to provide an online archive of documents from Lombardic Italy. Catalogue entries, transcriptions, commentary and bibliographies are available, but we await the promised digital facsimiles.

Monasterium A collection of links to a very large number of collections of monastic documents in Europe, some in full facsimile, some in transcript .

Castilian Documents Six late medieval Spanish documents.

Ilardi Microfilm Collection Digitised images of 15th century Italian diplomatic documents taken from microfilm. There are no descriptive notes or transcripts and the quality of the images is a bit gruesome, but it is primary source material on the web.

National Library of Wales: Digital Mirror A selection of treasures from the library, with images and some basic commentary, including a set of monastic charters.

Vatican Secret Archives provides information about the organisation and its activities and publications. The excellent article The Diplomatics of Papal Documents which helps the understanding of the structure and classification of these difficult texts, appears to be no longer available on the site, but it can be retrieved from the Internet Archive as linked here. Brewster, hero of the Internet!!

Historical Archives Kotor From the medieval town of Kotor in Montenegro, images of a range of historical documents, as well as pictures of the historical monuments of the area. The project seems to have never been completed.

Lopez Martin Collection of Maps and Manuscripts This site displays documents related to Iberian history, mainly from the 16th century. It appears to be very much under construction.

Fine Rolls Henry III Publication in both print and electronic format of the Fine Rolls of Henry III from 1216 to 1248, with further publication to 1272 anticipated. There is free access to digital facsimiles of the rolls. I did have some trouble with the interface, but it works fine with a broadband connection. This is the provision of genuine research material to your desktop.

The Anglo-American Legal Tradition From the O'Quinn Law Library at the University of Houston, this site contains complete digitised images of English plea rolls from the National Archives in London. To find a specific document you would have to use the online catalogue of the National Archives to identify it. The scans seem to be of variable quality. There are brief essays on the history of the English legal system, some paleography assistance in the form of examples with transcripts and a section on the structure of the plea roll. Hefty research material for the legal or historical specialist.

Archivos Medievales - Region de Murcia Digital This Spanish language site provides access to digitised documents in the public archives of the Murcia region of Spain from 1245 to 1504. It is necessary to download a proprietory plugin viewer.

Lublin W. Dokumencie This site shows legal documents from the city of Lublin in Poland, dating from the 14th to the 16th centuries. There are interactive running transcripts when you mouse over the high quality iimagery. The translations. diplomatic and archival descriptions are in Polish, but as they are Latin documents, those who don't read Polish can still use the interactive elements. Images are very high quality but slow to load. Be patient.

Richard II's Treasure This site is an exhibition about a roll of 1398-99, 28 metres long, which is an inventory of the treasures of Richard II. It was rediscovered (??!) in the 1990s in the National Archives at Kew (now catalogued as E101/411/9). Unfortunately, this exhibition only shows us a little bit of the actual document.

Blick in die Schatskammer Some treasures from the Stadtarchiv Augsburg, including a couple of early charters. German language site.

The Marrick Priory Documents This is part of the Leeds University Library's digitised special collections, but it is of special interest to us as the family medievalist has written a small publication about said priory. A selection of digitised images of interesting documents of various dates, some with transcriptions, are provided from the papers of this small remote nunnery in Yorkshire.

Cartae Cluniacenses Electronicae This contains texts of the charters of the monastery of Cluny in a rather fiddly database format designed for detailed research on diplomatic. There are facsimiles of two charters available.

Chartae Burgundiae Medii Aevi This is a database of texts of charters from monasteries in Burgundy. There are also several digital facsimiles of cartulary manuscripts. This is a French language site but an English version is forthcoming.

Medieval Deeds from Chetham Library This is a blog entry containing images of a number of medieval charter deeds. The main site is Medieval Documentation for Salford Hundred and is a blog about historical discovery in medieval Lancashire.

The Earliest Records of Worcester Cathedral A project on early charters and cartularies from Worcester cathedral, including an onlne version of the St Wulfstan Cartulary with images and transcript. There is an interesting discussion on the nature of cartularies.

Database of Archival Documents of Medieval Hungary A database of images of over 100,000 charters in the Hungarian National Archives, with catalogue descriptions in Hungarian. It is necessary to download special viewing software, the pictures cannot be downloaded or printed, and the interface is clunky and opens great numbers of browser windows, but it may be your only chance to look in detail at some Hungarian document paleography.

Heidelberger Urkunden - Digital A new section of the extensive Heidelberg University manuscript site, dealing with documents. It is still in progress, but there is a good selection of documents, mainy but not exclusively ecclesiastical.

Early English Laws A project to publish online and in print new editions and translations of all English legal codes, edicts and treatises produced up to the time of Magna Carta in 1215. It now also includes an extensive list of digital facsimiles of manuscript documents.

Kitzinger Urfehde-Verschreibungen Facsimiles and transcripts of 18 manuscripts documenting the release of prisoners from the Margrave of Brandenburg's jail in Kitzingen, Germany.

 

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This site is created and maintained by Dr Dianne Tillotson, freelance researcher and compulsive multimedia and web author. Comments are welcome. Material on this web site is copyright, but some parts more so than others. Please check here for copyright status and usage before you start making free with it. This page last modified 22/11/2014.